


Various ficlets

by AlexKrenin



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 08:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2575121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexKrenin/pseuds/AlexKrenin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompts. I've got a handful of them, now, and I think it's enough to make some worthy AO3 update !<br/>There is Malcolm every time, but sometimes with Jamie, sometimes with Julius, one time with Sam !<br/>Nothing explicit, I can't do that in ficlets. I'm the kind fo guy that needs a 20 000 word plot before sex.<br/>Fluff / angst only !  Enjoy !</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Malcolm / Julius - getting Malcolm to eat properly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request from Tumblr's Jexxer

 

 

 

 

-“Malcolm, we still need to talk about this Policy review…

 

I almost didn’t knock, but, truly, it is half pas eight pm and there’s no one left in Number Ten. Except workholics, janitors, and Malcolm Tucker.

He’s sitting at his desk, his jacket and tie discarded on the chair next to him , the heavy glasses on his nose telling tales about hours of reading.

He has half a botched smile as I come in, and that warms up my chest in tingling heat.  
But then, he tries to get up, and his eyes on me loose their focus. He freezes, sways backwards, and sits back heavily, mouth slack. The heat in my heart turns to ice in seconds.

-“Malcolm?

-“It’s ‘kay” he breathes, waving a vague hand in my general direction. “Thought I saw fucking stars for a while”.

 

I’m at his side in three steps and check his pulse at his throat. He groans, but he doesn’t push me away. His eyes keep staring at thin air, lost and wary. His heart beats in loud, slow arythmic thumps. Oh, Malcolm. Again, really?

-“What did you eat today?” I scold gently.

-“Wha’? “

-” I said, what did you eat today?”

He shrugs, gesturing at a few empty cups of coffee on his desk.

-“Oh, great. Coffee. Of course. Are you seriously planning suicide or are you just waiting to be spoon-fed? “

He looks up at me, finally, and frowns. I sense he’s considering throwing one more “I’m fine” fraud at me, but, meeting my eyes, he swallows it back, and this is for the best.

 

 

-“This has gone far enough, Malcolm. You are coming with me now, no arguing.”

-“I’m going nowhere until the fucking business’s sorted out, Baldy. ” he hisses, picking up the file he was reading.

 

 

I snatch it out of his hands, throw it away on the floor, and firmly cup his face with both my hands. If it takes bargaining, then bargain it shall be. I gently kiss his dried lips and he whimpers, leaning in, wanting more. It’s been a few days, indeed. It requires all my strenght, but I break the kiss and get up, handing him his jacket and coat.

-“You. Me. Restaurant. Now. “

 

His breath is a bit short, and his ice-blue pupils wide with dark promises, but he obeys. He even lets me help him up, my hand under his arm, in case he’d sway again. The fact that plain display of affection can make him do things that no amount of threat or violence can never ceases to amaze me.

I whisper sweet nothings to his ear the way I know calms him down, and he follows me in the street with only a moderate dose of grumbling.

 

 

 

 

I take him to the White Gallion, a quiet place he’ll surely find too expensive. The owner is family, though - the Nicholsons of Arnage is a quite wide family-, and he’ll give us a discrete spot. Malcolm, of course, rolls eyes and sneers at the “fucking posh canteen”, but sits down, pliant, and orders the stuffed quails without too much of a fuss.

 

I stubbornly refuse to talk about work until he’s halfway through his plate, resolutely entertaining him with Baroque art and portraits exhibitions, pouring his wine and brushing his hand from time to time. I see his pale hollow cheeks slowly turning back to actual human colours, and that warmth in my chest crawls back happily.

When I’ve played my game allright, and my silent scheme unfolds, I’ve made him drink three glasses of wine and eat enough food to keep him alive one more day. I feel like a spy coming back victorious from a dangerous mission.  
He’s smiling, performing a perfect, hilarious satire of Secretary of State for health Stenson, morbidly obese and bearing an awful Sussex accent. His voice is a bit raspy from the wine, as he nearly never drinks anything but coffe and that soda he’s fond of. His eyes are alight, magnificent, and, God, how handsome he is.

 

 

I shamelessly seduce him into one homemade Irish coffee, and I can’t hide my beaming pride as he lets my arm circle his waist on the way out.

In the cab, I ask him “office or home?” and he replies with a hungry kiss, scorching hot and persistent. My victory is complete. Trumpets chant in my head.

 

Back at Number Ten, the janitors soon will find his office door open, all lights on, his reading glasses on his files and his tie on the chair, but Malcolm doesn’t care right now, and I must admit, I have never been so proud of myself.


	2. Malcolm / Julius + Classic music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request from anon

  
  
  
  
  
  
I did choose Wigmore hall, and Beethoven’s Third.

When I showed him the tickets, he snorted and hissed a long, venomous rant about my Oxford stiff-ass posh tastes, but I did fairly earn this date by sheer hard work, and I must admit, a bit of meddling with the PM’s agenda serving his purposes.

 

Malcolm’s word is Holy word, and we both take our seats, balcony, private lodge of course. Nothing is too good for him. While the orchestra gathers and tunes, I see him fidgeting for a while, like he does every time I pull him with me to places too luxurious for his simple habits.

I gently immobilize his flustered fingers with mine, whispering that he deserves luxury more than half of those wealthy simpletons around us. He weights the truth in my words for a while, and still doubts, but he seems quieter. He busies himself with concealing his hungry, fascinated stares at the sumptuous venue, to my deepest delight.

 

 

His uneasiness lasts until the applause ends and the first exploding notes of Beethoven’s Eroica resonate in the hall.

From that very second, and until the very last of the first movement, he freezes, and does not move in the slightest, eyes fixed on some point between us and the left side of the curtain.

 

 

I know, now, that I did choose wisely.

 

At the second movement, that funeral march, his fingers somewhat clench around the armrest of his chair. I grab them in mine before he breaks anything and keep them warm on my lap. He doesn’t even tear his gaze from that curtain.

 

 

 

 

At the scherzo, the music has him so still I have an urge to check his breathing. Strangely, I cannot refrain myself from picturing this masterpiece somehow having always been written for him, and meeting him tonight at last. It was, after all, Beethoven realizing his hearing disease had no cure, and turning pain into magnificence. It is a story about transforming wounds into war force, and the battlefields you need to step on, following ideas, leaving the dead behind. I am not sure he even knows anything about that, but there is not a soul in that hall tonight who is closer to Beethoven’s than Malcolm Tucker.

 

 

 

 

At the highest point of the finale, I almost sense those two troubled geniuses crossing paths at last through time and space, meeting face to face here in that hall, speaking without words in the language of art and souls, comforting each other’s pain.   
  
The surreal beauty of it almost brings me to tears.

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

The last clapping sounds turn to silence and he doesn’t seem able to talk much, I fear. He lets me kiss his temple, and drag him outside to a cab and my father’s Club for a brandy and biscuits, but his eyes stay in the distance, and he keeps giving dazed replies to my questions.

In my living room, a long time after, he slowly becomes more responsive to my words and kisses, letting me gently remove that dashing suit he chose to wear, with at last a sigh and a glance dedicated to me.

But his longest sentence of this evening will be about the collection of compact discs he once saw in my shelves, asking me if there’s anything with that music in it, somehow. I smile before I dive into his mouth, having for once a worthy gift idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Malcolm / Jamie + funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request from Anon

 

 

 

He throws the rose he was holding on the polished coffin and instead of walking away like everyone else did, his washed-out eyes lock with one of the golden nails on the dark wood and he doesn’t move. How pale he is, his blank face and distant gaze barely hiding the utter devastation, the mess, the ruin.  
  
  
  
Jamie, dear Jamie never leaving his side, throws his own flower, and, darting up a worried look at him, discretely grabs his sleeve to pull him away from that neat, yet terrifying hole in the ground. Malcolm, clearly on autopilot, takes a few steps back, his shattered gaze still hooked on the coffin.  
Jamie doesn’t seem to care, or even realize anything about that woman we are burying, his attention for Malcolm alone, as I’d expect. My turn comes to leave my rose and walk away. Passing in front of them, I squeeze Malcolm’s hand, and he nods. “Julius”, he whispers.   
  
  
He doesn’t cry, like a few women do. He doesn’t speak, as a few old men do. He doesn’t pray, he never did. His desperate, red-rimmed eyes simply refuse to let go of the coffin. 

I wonder if anyone else than Jamie and I in that small graveyard know how deep that man is aching.  
Who knows exactly what he gave to that woman all those years, and what she takes with her to the ground, now. Who knows the piece of him he feels missing, the agony of it so plainly readable on his face.

 

  
The priest shuts his book, two men in dungarees grab a pair of shovels. and Malcolm shudders so hard Jamies has to squeeze his arm. They know, I suppose, they both buried corpses already.

They know it’s the last minute, the last prayer, the last words before the first, cruel shovelful of dirt hits the coffin with a thud that says it’s all over. From now on, says the dirt, that woman is mine. You did what you had to do, now she is a body. She is cold cells and dried skin, she is is soil and she is earth, silence falls, darkness creeps.

 

  
  
Somewhere deep in that grave the worms of decay await.

 

  
  
  
The Office cluster of people walks away to the parking lot, to that street behind the trees, behind the fence, to traffic lights and humming noises, to the returning rights of the living.  
The smaller, messier family cluster eventually withdraws too, some of them trying to pull Malcolm along. Jamie shakes his head. They give up.  
  
  
The two of them stand alone, autumn leaves painting their black suits in vibrant gold. I see from afar Jamie gently talking, kissing his hand, urging him on, panicked, I guess, at the sight of Malcolm broken.

 

  
  
  
It’s almost dark, and I’m considering adding my voice to Jamie’s, but as I walk closer, Malcolm finally turns his back, the shredding of his heart visible from the distance.  
  
I meet them halfway, passing a soothing hand behind dear Malcolm’s shivering back. I hail a cab, and head it to my house, where, I hope, we will find a way to ease his pain.  
  
  
  
He sits, a bit stunned I fear, and something in his jacket makes a crumpling noise. He picks it up, and Jamie and I both wince.

  
  
It’s the announcement card. He gives out a strangled curse, then, and tears the paper in half, throwing it on the floor between our shoes.  
He cries, at last, thank God he cries, and Jamie pulls him into his arms, as relieved as I am.  
  
I dare not move, though, because I am not Jamie. And because that piece of paper on my shoe stares back at me with stories about all the life, and all the death of this world.  


 

 

> ****
> 
>   
> _You are invited to the ceremony and religious service given for_  
>   
>   
>  _**NICOLA MURRAY** _  
> _Beloved Wife and Mother_
> 
> _departed too soon while battling lenghty illness._
> 
>   
>   
> _Harrow Church, Saturday 6th of November, 2010_  
>  _Service at 10am._  
>   
>  ****  
>   
> 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  


	4. Malcolm / Sam + end of season 3 + fleece sweater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request from Tumblr's shutettyupupup

 

 

 

 

What’s the name of that fucking show again? Those yankee half-hysteric howling nags in their fancy houses with nothing to do except choosing fucking nailpolish.  
Latest UK audience ratings I’ve had a hand on said this shit was those last six months’ top-grade. Fuck, we really live in a world made of cunt.  
  
Cunt is litteraly the fucking air we breathe, right.  
  
What’s that shit named? Must be on that TV programme, on the shelf, but it would require me getting up, and I’m not. I’m never getting up again. I’ll just wait here for cancer and fucking air toxins to wipe out two thirds of all the fucking morons sitting on the Earth and then I’ll get up and kill the rest myself as fucking back-in-shape exercise.  
  
Yae. I’ll just do that.  
  
The Blackberry rings, and I wince at the sound. The list of people I actually pick up for has shrunk to three. The basic probability is low, but I angle my head to see who the fuck it might be anyways.

 

  
Shit, it’s **Sam**.  
  
First name on the list.

  
  
  
Shitfuck.

 

 

 

  
I’ve been in that couch for hours, I haven’t eaten a thing since yesterday 6pm and I must look like a fucking vampire. Besides, that fleece has seen better days. Rectification : this fucking fleece screams “I quit giving fucks” fucking louder than words.  
Still. _Sam._  
  
I pick up.

 

 

  
  
-“Yea.  
  
<” _Malcolm? It’s been a week without a word, I thought you … >_  
  
-“I’m fucking alive and I’m not even fucking drunk, Sam, I’m fine. Now carry on.  
  
 _< ”Malcolm, please. Just talk to me.”>_  
  
-“You have better stuff to do, girl.  
  
 _< ”No, I haven’t. I’m at your door, actually”>_  
  
 **Fuck.**

 

 

 

  
  
I’m up before I even think about it and my back cracks in three seperate spots. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the kitchen glass door and, right, vampire it is. I run a hand in my hair, as if it’d change a thing, walking to the door to check if she’s fucking kidding or not.  
She isn’t. Of course she isn’t. That’s _Sam_.

 

  
  
She’s here, groceries in her hands, looking positively gorgeous, high heels, white blouse. I lower my eyes, waiting for the ‘look like shit’ line.  
  
I hear the grocery bag being laid on the floor, the door closing. The next thing I feel is fucking suffocation, because she’s fucking hugging me, bear hug style. Her hair is soft. I don’t remember hair could be this soft. I like her perfume, too. Don’t think I ever mentioned it.  
  
I don’t know where to put my fucking hands. Is shoulders allright? Shoulders it is.

 

  
  
-“Oh, Malcolm, I was worried, you know.”  
  
-“Well you don’t have too. I’m not planning suicide. I’m actually planning nothing. I…  “  
  
  
This came half as steady as I wished for. But it’ll have to do. I carefully walk back to the living room, and before I have time to find the fucking remote, I hear her laughter behind me and wince.

-“Malcolm! You were watching Desperate Housewives ! I was right to worry.”

 

  
  
So. That’s what that shit’s called. Right.

 

 

 

  
  
She puts the food on my dinner table, pulls out a smaller bag and hands it to me. It’s full of fruit, and her wink makes me nervous. I eat some, and they’re good. When did I start obeying my own PA like she was…like she was what?  
  
She sits next to me on the couch, her legs crossed high, and I have to focus on the fruit bag like a fucking moron. She speaks about the office for a while, and I think she’s trying to push me back in the train. I shrug, refusing to even hear about it. Cunts, they’re all cunts. I’ll wait for them to die, that’s all.  
  
Looks like it fucking breaks her heart, and the sight of her face crumbling down makes my own guts twist. _Shit_. I straighten up a bit, put down the fruit, brush a hand down my sweater, clear my throat.  
  
I’m not talking about the fucking office, I just don’t want her to be sad. Look, I smile, even. Serve her a drink. Praise her looks. Smile again, but better. She looks relieved. Good. She speaks about her missing me, worrying I’d loose hope, terrified I’d give up the fight. She tells me she needs me around, fighting, she says a few more things, I’m not listening because her legs are fucking magnificent, and at some point she’s saying she wants me back. She’d do anything, she says, including unreasonable things she restrained herself from doing since day one, and I don’t understand.

 

 

  
  
The next second, she’s lying on top of me, straddling my thighs, and that kiss she gives me is burning my brain into a crisp.  
  
Oh. _**That’s**_ what she meant.  
  
I don’t know where to put my hands. Is waist allright? Waist it will be.  
  
She is soft and sweet, like a memory of who I was ages ago, and I feel old, and I feel guilty. But she is begging me, her slender hands on my chest, her lips on my neck, and that moan I hear must be mine. Maybe, then.  
  
  
Maybe I’ll kiss her back. Maybe I’ll hear her voice. Maybe, after all, I can do as she says for once. She is Sam. **My** Sam.  
  
  
  
  
  
From day one, first name on the list.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 


	5. Malcolm / Jamie  + wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request from Anon

 

 

 **30 days before**  
============

 

 

 

The first time she speaks about it, she drops it like a fucking bomb on Malcolm’s desk one fine morning, in the tight space between the moment he hands over the file holder with signed papers and the instant she lays his coffee mug next to his keyboard.

-” The wedding’s next month, by the way.

 

Malc drops his favourite pen right in the fucking cup. He stares at her for a full fat minute, stone still. Meanwhile, I am browsing memories, trying to find back the name of that Indian fucker she’s with.

 

-”Sam” he says, trying very hard not to stutter, and currently failing, “he just fucking proposed you last week”.

-”Last year, Malcolm. It was last year, in August. You noticed the ring the next morning and gave me the Spanish Inquisition for half an hour until you got his name, address, job description and family tree, remember?”

He drops his gaze and nodds vaguely, and the way Sam tames the lion with one whiplash and a word amazes me as always. Fuck, what’s the name of that guy. Works in a web-programming hipster cave or something.

 

Malcolm actually fucking fidgets, until she has mercy on him and smiles.

-”You’re both invited of course. I can’t see it without you both at my side.”

 

 

I don’t want to, but I know a fucking huge grin is splitting my face in two right now. I fucking love weddings. Free food, unlimited booze, chicks in short dresses and a fuckload o’ fuckers to sneer about. I don’t even need to change my office suit.

 

Malcolm gives that flash-smile he pulls out when he’s pressing the escape button, and mutters unrelated words like of course, delighted, and see you later. But this is Sam, not any kind of part-time temp with arsespray brain. She gently grabs his arm before he makes it to the door and whispers, somewhat blushing:

-”Also, Malcolm…

Her whispering, anguished voice is something he never ignores.

He walks closer, his face fucking alight with concern, and his eyes, _those_ eyes, the eyes no one at the office ever sees, cover her face in raw attention.

-”You know, since my father… well, he was gone long before you hired me. You’ve been pretty much the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had since, and…

 

He’s growing positively anxious by the second now.

 

There is no way he knows how to deal with the fact, but every word she says is true.

He’s been treating her like a daughter since day one. Not the cuddly dad type, really. But very nicely lifting her up from shy cupcake to killer queen in one year, taking time to fucking listen to her, give fucking good advice, and bollocking inconsiderate boyfriends to violent death, dragging their mutilated corpses through her front door like garbage, once or twice. If this isn’t what Daddy Malcolm would’ve been like, well I don’t know.

 

 

-”I wondered”, she goes on, “if you could be there to walk me down the aisle, next month”

He freezes, his face descending two shades towards pure white. He opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out. He shuts up, then, and that’s a fucking rarity. He just smiles fondly and kisses her cheek. He actually genuinely _kisses her cheek_. “Of course I will”, he breathes.  
  
  
I think she’s crying now.

 

 

 

 

************

 

 

 

  
  
 **4,5 hours after**

============

 

  
I chose the perfect spot.

 

 

Far enough from the fucking DJ, halfway between the cake and the bar, lonely table, dark corner.

Malcolm’s tired and half-drunk, which makes him fucking easy to kiss. Well, for the tired part, I can get it, he’s been fucking restless since morning.

I’ve never seen a man, let alone Malcolm the Ripper, being so afraid of fucking up one simple walk. When the car stopped in front of the church, and the vision of beauty Sam was got out in a fucking cloud of white organza, he clenched his fists so hard he could have broken his own fucking bones. He walked like a prince, I must give him that, and left her to that Indian guy with a last stare of warning.

He came to sit next to me then, and when the choir sang, right after their vows, I think I saw his eyes shine a bit too much for a man that never cries.  


 

For the drunk part, well, I’m not sure I understand, he only got, like, four glasses of wine or something. Well, he’s thin as fuck, maybe that does it. Whatever. It’s fun. It’s fucking _great_.

Because, when Sam, evening dress, star-like smile, leaves her husband’s arms as their favourite slow turns to another, and asks him for a dance, he only pauses for ten seconds before he gets up, holds her hand, and fucking dances with her, because she asked, because it’s her.

I could fucking applause. Well, _I **’** m_ fucking pissed-drunk, and for a fucking reason. I had four of the bottles Malcolm wouldn’t finish. Heh.

 

We’re both drunk. That’s _great_.

 

 

So, when we hear Sam facing bravely the drunk mother-in-law late night question show, none of us even bother to get up and unleash hell.

Sam tries to keep it quiet, but we hear bits and pieces, like no, Malcolm is not her father, he’s her boss, and yes, he is gay, well, not exactly, maybe bisexual, having just settled his mind for a man, and yes, that’s Jamie on his side, and no, he’s not gay either, he’s, you know, making an exception…

I ask him if he wants to cut this old prying curry sauce witch, but Malcolm mumbles something about not giving a fuck, because he won’t see those people ever again anyways. Got a point.

The music is loud, and the shittiest ever. It swings from 80’s pop to indie rock, and it sucks from cradle to grave. Malcolm doesn’t seem to care. He’s smiling far too often for a man that never smiles, lets me fill his glass as many times as I fucking want, and has to speak right in my ear to be heard, which is fucking _good_.

 

 

We’re both drunk. _Wonderful._

So, around 4am, when the dance floor’s a mess of empty cups and ribbons and balloons, when the old ones sleep, the youngest on their lap, and only a few drunkards remain, there’s this one song I like, so I get up, grabbing his hand.

He looks around, weighting possibilities for a dreadful second, then gives in, and, fuck, he grabs my waist. We never done that. Never. He’s tired and drunk but, God, he’s gorgeous, he’s dashing in that grey suit, the flowers in his lapel matching Sam’s bouquet. At some point I must say something about that, because he stops giving any surviving fuck for anyone else, grabs my face and kisses me like I’m water and air to him. My fucking knees almost give up on me, and my brain goes blank.

When he pulls away, the first thing I see over his shoulder is Sam, tears in her eyes, raising to fucking thumbs up in the air. His husband. _Sundeep_. That’s his name, Sundeep, smiling at us like we are the cutest thing.

All around, those random faces, some of them shocked, some of them curious, a few touched, most not even noticing. Among the number of the oblivious, Malcolm Tucker, his forehead on my shoulder, gripping my waist, so close to me I don’t even need another concept of paradize.

 

 

 

Yea.

I fucking love weddings.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, you noticed. There are fanfictions so good hey become headcanons you just can't ignore.  
> Featuring Sundeep from Groteskburlesque masterpiece's "Secure beneath the watchful eyes".


End file.
